Measures to stem leaks at Fukushima plant appeared to have failed, amid discovery of two bodies of men killed by tsunami A senior Japanese official has warned that the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant could drag on for months, after another attempt to stem leaks of highly radioactive water appeared to end in failure. Goshi Hosono, an aide to the prime minister, Naoto Kan, said everything possible was being done to contain radiation leaks, which have contaminated the environment and food and water supplies, prompted mass evacuations and fomented fear as far away as Tokyo, 150 miles to the south. “We have not escaped from a crisis situation, but it is somewhat stabilised,” Hosono said on television. Asked how long it would take to bring the plant’s overheating reactors under control, he said. “I think several months would be one target.” The admission that there is no end in sight to the world’s worst nuclear power accident since Chernobyl came after the recovery of two bodies inside the Daiichi plant. The workers were killed when it was struck by the 11 March tsunami. They were found last Wednesday, but had to be decontaminated before they could be handed over to relatives after almost three weeks of exposure to radiation. The men, Kazhiko Kokubo, 24, and Yoshiki Terashima, 21, who were found in the basement of a reactor turbine building, died from multiple head injuries, reports said. Theirs were the first confirmed deaths at the Daiichi plant. “It pains us to have lost these two young workers, who were trying to protect the power plant during the earthquake and tsunami,” said Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman of Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco]. The size of the task facing about 600 workers, troops and firefighters at the plant was underlined at the weekend with the discovery of a 20cm crack in a concrete pit connected to the No 2 reactor. The leak generated radiation levels of 1,000 millisieverts an hour in the air inside the reactor, while Tepco said it could also be behind the seepage of radioactive iodine into the sea, sending contamination levels soaring to 4,000 times the legal limit. Experts say that beyond the vicinity of the plant, there is minimal risk to human health in other parts of Japan or overseas. After failed attempts to seal the crack by pouring concrete into the pit, workers have fed it with a water-absorbent polymer, along with sawdust and shredded newspaper, before topping the mixture with more concrete. On Sunday evening, nuclear safety officials conceded that the polymer, which can expand to 50 times its normal size when combined with water, had made no impact on the water leakage, but added they would wait until Monday before deciding whether to abandon the approach. “We were hoping the polymers would function like diapers, but we have yet to see a visible effect,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear and industrial safety agency. He echoed the grim prognosis offered by Hosono. “It will take a few months until we finally get things under control and have a better idea about the future,” Nishiyama said. “We’ll face a crucial turning point within the next few months, but that is not the end of it.” Highly radioactive water has flooded the basement of the No 2 reactor and a connecting underground trench. The water in the cracked pit is thought to have come from partially melted fuel rods in the reactor’s core. In their battle to cool overheated reactors and prevent a dangerous meltdown of highly radioactive fuel rods, workers have doused reactors with huge quantities of seawater. The contaminated runoff, however, has prevented technicians and engineers from getting closer to the reactors to make proper repairs. Fresh water is being pumped into No 1, 2 and 3 reactors using external power, Nishiyama said, adding that the remaining three reactors were considered stable. More than 12,000 people are known to have died in the earthquake and tsunami, while 15,472 are missing, according to police. More than 163,000 people are still living in evacuation shelters. Japan disaster Japan Nuclear power Energy Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Pair of suicide bombers kill 30 in a continuing campaign of attacks on places of worship militants consider un-Islamic A pair of suicide bombers struck a shrine in Pakistan killing 30 people continuing a campaign of attacks against places of worship that extremists consider un-Islamic, officials said. The practice of praying, singing and meditating at the shrines of holy men is widespread and much loved across Pakistan, but extremists consider it a dangerous deviation from the austere Islam they espouse. Several thousand people were attending celebrations to mark the anniversary of the Sakhi Sarwar shrine in Dera Ghazi Khan district of Punjab province when the bombers struck crowds outside the complex, said government administrator Iftikhar Saho. A stampede followed the bombings, but it was unclear whether that caused any casualties. Emergency coordinator Natiq Hayat said 30 people were killed and 100 wounded, 20 of them critically. TV footage showed ambulances racing to hospitals and volunteers helping blood-soaked victims. Shrines in Pakistan range from one-room tombs in small villages to large complexes in major cities that attract thousands every day. There has been a series of bloody attacks on them, including one that killed 47 people at the nation’s most revered shrine in Lahore last year. Local and foreign Islamist militants have carried out hundreds of attacks in Pakistan over the last three years, targeting government buildings and security forces, Western targets like embassies and hotels as well as religious minorities and Muslim sects they consider heretical. The government and the army have tried to crack down on the militants, but have struggled to unite the nation against the threat and face persistent allegations they are protecting some extremists. Many Islamist politicians do not publicly criticize the militants, preferring to spread conspiracy theories that American or Indian agents are responsible. These views are widely aired, often uncritically, in some media. Pakistan Global terrorism guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Prime minister Essam Sharaf condemns Zamalek fans who invaded pitch and attacked referee during football match It was trailed as a sporting celebration of freedom over tyranny: clubs from north Africa’s two revolutionary nations coming head-to-head on the football pitch, just weeks after mass uprisings toppled dictators in both countries. It ended with a thousand-strong pitch invasion, unprecedented riots and the intervention of the army. Egypt’s new prime minister has offered a formal apology to the Tunisian people, after a African Champions League tie played in Cairo on Saturday descended into chaos, on live television. The match – between Egyptian giants Zamalek and Tunisian outfit Club Africain – kicked off to a festive atmosphere as Zamalek fans decked out Cairo Stadium with banners welcoming their fellow Arabs and lauding the overthrowing of former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, which helped spark Egypt’s own revolution soon afterwards. But as the game entered stoppage time with Zamalek trailing 5-4 on aggregate and facing elimination from the competition, supporters of the home side began pouring on to the pitch in droves. They were incensed at having a goal ruled out for offside. In scenes later described by the Egyptian interior minister as an “act of thuggery” and captured live by television cameras, fans attacked the referee, stripped Tunisian players of their clothes and dismantled goalposts. Nine people were injured and there were an unspecified number of arrests. “Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has apologised to the government and people of Tunisia, to the players of Tunisia’s Africain and to the Algerian referee for what happened in Cairo stadium,” state-owned daily Al-Ahram reported on Sunday. The violence came just days after Egypt’s football calendar finally restarted after two months of suspension owing to the anti-government protests sweeping the country. The ruling military council has promised to return stability to the Arab world’s most populous nation, but in the aftermath of Saturday’s drama football chiefs believe the domestic league may now be halted indefinitely. Despite the unsavoury scenes, there are signs that pan-Arab revolutionary solidarity remains intact. A Facebook group entitled ‘On behalf of Egypt, we are sorry Tunisia’ swiftly attracted tens of thousands of members, and prompted a series of Tunisian response groups including ‘Apology is accepted, Egyptian people’ and ‘No apologies [needed] between liberal nations’. Club Africain players, who were escorted to their hotel by soldiers after the attacks, have thanked their Zamalek counterparts for helping to protect them from the mayhem. Africain captain Wissem Ben Yahia said he was grateful to the Egyptian footballers for “doing their best to stop the hooligans”. The Egyptian FA labelled the events “shameful” and promised a full investigation. It said in a statement: “The FA stresses the strong relationship with our brothers in Tunisia and the rapport that produced the honourable revolutions in both countries. Such a relationship is much deeper than any odd incident from an irresponsible group.” Another investigation will be held by the Confederation of African Football . Its flagship champions league tournament has already faced a beleaguered season, with matches suspended in war-torn Libya and Ivory Coast. Egypt Tunisia Zamalek Tunisia Champions League Middle East Jack Shenker guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Vermont Moves to Improve Health Care Reform With Single Payer Health Care Plan
April 3, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media As Karoli already noted, Vermont is now moving towards passing a single payer health care plan in their state. President Obama recently stated his support for allowing waivers for states that want to implement single payer health plans before the date of 2017 called for in the Affordable Care Act. And as Rachel Maddow noted here, despite all of their rhetoric about how Republicans supposedly have better ideas for how to reform our health care system, we’re not seeing any of these red states step up in the manner Vermont has and offer any alternatives like we’re seeing in Vermont. I hope to hell we see this end up being implemented in Vermont since it could lead to other states following their model, which is similar to how Canada ended up with their system. One province started it and others followed and eventually the entire country. Something needs to give to get us out from under the grip of the insurance companies and their lock on our system of providing health care to our citizens that puts profits and their stock holders above the needs of those paying into the system. And thank you to Bernie Sanders for helping to promote this in your state.
Continue reading …Krugman: ‘All This Stuff About Uncertainty is a Myth Made Up to Blame Unemployment on Obama’
April 3, 2011 No Comment
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was in his predictable defend Obama at all costs mode on Sunday's “This Week.” When former Bush administration official Torie Clarke said unemployment remains high because the private sector is concerned about future regulations, the Nobel Laureate scoffed, “All of this stuff about uncertainty is just a myth being made up to blame this on Obama” (video follows with transcript and commentary): TORIE CLARKE, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: But here’s the failure of policy I think. What would really get the private sector humming and hiring a lot of people is if they have predictability and certainty about things like regulatory regimes, and are some of these trade agreements going to go through that we really need because it is a global picture and not just a domestic one. And I know there’s a lot going on, but nobody seems to be focusing on that. Not the Administration, not Congress, and Paul’s laughing, but you agree? PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: Can I say, ’cause that’s not, the reason businesses are not investing is they have tons and tons of excess capacity. There’s a very clear relationship historically between the amount of unemployment and, and the amount of business investment. When unemployment is high, capacity is low, investment is low, there’s nothing. All of this stuff about uncertainty is just a myth being made up to blame this on Obama… CLARKE: No, money’s a coward. Money’s a coward: it’s not going to go unless it can make money. KRUGMAN: There’s nothing in there. There’s nothing in there. It’s exactly what you’d expect. You have to wonder whether Krugman is actually this clueless or if he knows what he's saying is nonsense but understands how important it is for him to deflect criticism of Obama regardless of merit. There's absolutely no question small, medium, and large businesses are concerned about ObamaCare for example and exactly how it's going to impact them. Until the Supreme Court rules on its Constitutionality, no employer knows what they have to comply with concerning this legislation. Taxes are another issue, for the compromise the White House reached with Congress in December only settled this question through 2012. No one knows what tax rates are going to be in 2013, and this has to be acting as a business inhibitor. So, too, is the possibility the Environmental Protection Agency will begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions. Almost as important are concerns throughout the banking, lending, and real estate industries that changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might further shock the mortgage market. And the entire oil industry is currently being inhibited by Obama-imposed restrictions on offshore drilling. The reality is there are a huge number of uncertainties that companies have to deal with as a result of this Administration's business-unfriendly posture, and the idea that someone like Krugman thinks this isn't having the slightest negative impact on hiring is absurd. Ironically, this Nobel laureate wonders why voters are so ill-informed.
Continue reading …In news all too reminiscent of the BP oil explosion, it looks like this nuclear crisis is going to drag on and on — thanks to a history of failing to meet safety standards and industry-friendly regulators — just like here! The operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Saturday that highly radioactive water was leaking from a pit near a reactor into the ocean, which may partially explain the high levels of radioactivity that have been found in seawater off the coast. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it had detected an 8-inch crack in the concrete pit holding power cables near reactor No. 2 and was working to seal the fracture. Tepco said the water was coming directly from the reactor and the radiation level was 1,000 millisieverts an hour. The annual limit of radiation exposure allowed for Fukushima workers is 250 millisieverts. Workers pumped cement into the shaft Saturday, but by the end of the day, the flow of water into the ocean had not diminished. Engineers speculated that the water was preventing the cement from setting, allowing it to be washed away. Tepco officials said that on Sunday morning they would explore using a polymer — a type of quick-setting plastic — to plug the leak. After spraying thousands of tons of water on the reactors at Fukushima over the last three weeks to keep the facility from overheating and releasing dangerous amounts of radiation over a wide area, the utility is faced with the problem of great volumes of contaminated water. With storage tanks at the facility nearing capacity, Tepco is contemplating storing the water in a giant artificial floating island offshore, Kyodo news reported. Tepco, which has been monitoring radiation levels in seawater just offshore from the plant, said it would begin sampling about nine miles off the coast. Workers have also been spraying the grounds of the plant with a polymer in an attempt to prevent any radioactive isotopes that have been deposited there from escaping from the vicinity of the plant. The polymer acts like a kind of super-glue, binding any contaminants to the soil so they cannot be blown away . Meanwhile, here across the ocean, atomic forensics experts are piecing together the clues to figure out exactly what’s going on.
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Charlie Sheen’s remaining credibility was blown out of the water as fans booed him off-stage on the first night of his 20-date tour In pictures: Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option Some came out of solidarity, some came for the spectacle. Most came for both and saw no contradiction in that. On Saturday night Charlie Sheen kicked off his tour, Sheenishly titled “Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option,” in Detroit. But that latter statement proved to be over-optimistic, and what torpedoed were the remnants of Sheen’s once-impressive career. Sheen’s image has always been that of a bad boy, both on and off the screen. His misdemeanours over the years – shooting a fiancée in the arm, drug overdoses – were seen by his fans as proof of Sheen’s adorable naughtiness. His hugely successful TV show, Two and a Half Men, for which he was paid almost $2m an episode, mined this reputation with his character, the wittily hedonistic, Charlie Harper. Since his very public falling out with the producers of the show earlier this year, Sheen, a once-skilled comic and character actor, has thrown his energies into giving rambling interviews, full of talk of “winning” and “tiger blood”. His father, Martin Sheen, interviewed on Radio 4′s Desert Island Discs on Sunday, said his addict son needs “help and sympathy”. Both were in short supply at the opening night of his show. It was both poignant and appropriate for the former A-list Hollywood star to begin his sell-out tour in Detroit. Now less of a city and more a symbol of the death of American industry, this former hub of car manufacturing is dying. Last week, the US census report revealed that Detroit’s population had dropped by a quarter in the past decade and the city’s mayor was reduced to begging for a recount in the hope of bringing it up enough to qualify the city for increased state and federal aid. Whether Sheen’s appeal now lies in what some see as his aspirational lifestyle or simply voyeuristic rubbernecking is something of a fuzzy issue. Jason Proventher, and Jack Green, both 23 and from Michigan, were quick to pinpoint why they had come: “I’m here to see him fall apart,” said Green. His friend added, “He’s living the American dream!” Is falling apart the American dream? “No,” said Proventher. “It’s the ride up to it that’s the dream, the fun part.” “He’s awesome!” cried Jeff Strasche, 36, from Detroit. Were the rambling webcam videos Sheen recently put up on the internet awesome? “No, those were kind of weird. But this is going to be awesome!” Inside Detroit’s sold-out 5,100 seat Fox Theater, the concession stand was doing a healthy business selling unhealthy items, including $35 T-shirts proclaiming “Bangin’ 7gs”, referring to Sheen’s professed former drug intake, and a $25 hat that informed onlookers “I’m not bipolar”. When Sheen appeared on stage, 45 minutes late, he had the smile of a Halloween pumpkin, his mouth full of shadows where teeth had once been. Things started well for him. His sneers at his former show, Two and a Half Men prompting cheers from the audience. But when he spoke, it was a mix of incoherencies and vitriol: “I used my power against them and stuffed their arms down their gaping throats. No time to take their stinking toupees because this warlock was on the move!” he bellowed. “Smoke some more crack, Charlie!” someone shouted. The underrated Joaquin Phoenix 2010 mockumentary, I’m Still Here – about a Hollywood star who suffers a mental breakdown and is bullied by the public – suddenly looked shockingly prescient. Heartbreakingly, clips of Sheen from Platoon and Wall Street played on screen while Sheen himself stumbled about on stage. He tried to show a film he made in the 1980s with Johnny Depp, but the boos prompted an early end to that. “Maybe it’s more appropriate for me to tell some crack stories,” he said. The audience cheered. “What do you want me to talk about?” he asked a member of the audience. “I want to hear about the porn stars!” “Why do you want to hear about that?” he asked, disappointed. It was a classic misunderstanding: he thought they loved him for his fearless honesty; they did, but only in regards to his intake of crack and porn. “OK, OK, I’ll do some crack stories,” he relented, desperately. But it was too late, and even Sheen, through the fog of his own self-delusion, could see that. He promised to come back after the video of Snoop Dogg’s video for his new song, titled Winning. But instead, the lights came up and the show was prematurely over. Boos filled the auditorium. In his baggy suit and creaky reading glasses, Sheen had looked like a man bemused. Here was an audience that had always encouraged him to be the onscreen bad boy, but liked him a lot less when he revealed the reality of what being a bad boy for several decades meant. But if Sheen was confused, the audience was even more so. Afterwards, Jason Provencher and Jack Green looked stunned. “I thought he’d be funnier,” said Green. But Sheen didn’t write the scripts for Two and a Half Men. Someone else wrote those jokes for him. “I know. But I thought the show was supposed to overlap with his real life.” Paul Hare, also from Detroit, echoed the sentiment. “It sucked!” What had he expected to see? “A trainwreck.” So shouldn’t he be satisfied? “He should have been funnier! Why wasn’t he funnier?” Charlie Sheen United States Hadley Freeman guardian.co.uk
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Richard Goldstone writes that Israeli military investigations have revealed that civilians were not targeted as a matter of policy The judge who chaired the controversial UN inquiry into Israel’s attack on Gaza from December 2008 has expressed regret that his report may have been inaccurate. Richard Goldstone, who led the committee that produced the Goldstone report, said in a newspaper article that “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a very different document”. The judge’s article was welcomed by Israeli leaders. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told ministers on Sunday: “There are very few incidents in which false accusations are taken back, and this is the case with the Goldstone report.” He said that Israel would now try to get the report retracted by the UN. The Gaza War, which the Israeli army called Operation Cast Lead, began in December 2008 and lasted for three weeks. By the end, more than 1,400 Palestinians were dead, at least half of whom were civilians, and 13 Israelis, three of whom were civilians. Goldstone was asked to head a fact-finding committee into allegations of war crimes by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Israel refused to co-operate with the mission and would not allow Goldstone’s committee to travel to the Gaza Strip via Israel. The report accused both Hamas and Israel of war crimes and deliberately targeting civilians. It urged that both sides should investigate their own actions or risk being investigated by the international criminal court. Goldstone was vilified after the publication of the report by supporters of Israel who accused him of a “blood libel”, a false accusation that had been used to demonise Jews in the past. However, in a new article in the Washington Post , Goldstone appeared to backtrack from some of his findings. He wrote that subsequent Israeli military investigations had confirmed some of the report’s findings but also indicated that, “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy” by Israel. He cited the killing of 29 members of the al-Simouni family as evidence that Israel had not deliberately targeted civilians. “The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack.” Goldstone said that his committee made recommendations based on the evidence before them, but because Israel refused to submit evidence, its views could not be taken into account. “As I indicated right from the beginning, I would have welcomed Israel’s co-operation,” he said. He also noted that the Israeli army had begun 400 investigations into allegations against Israeli soldiers but regretted that more than two years later, few had been finished and none had been held in public. Captain Aryeh Shalikar, a spokesman for the Israeli army, said that Goldstone’s article proved that Israeli forces had never intentionally targeted Gazan civilians, while the strategy of Hamas was to target Israeli civilians. “We have also demonstrated that we are ready and willing to investigate ourselves,” he said. Israeli officials admit that the Gaza war, because of the high Palestinian death toll and subsequent furore, has caused the country diplomatic and public relations problems. Israeli media responded to Goldstone’s article with jubilation. The columnists of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper offered a conciliatory tone to the judge for having the courage to question his initial findings, while Ma’ariv writers were unforgiving. One wrote: “He is undeserving of either forgiveness or mercy” and had perpetrated “a despicable and shameful act”. Gaza Israel Middle East Palestinian territories United Nations Binyamin Netanyahu Judaism Hamas International criminal court Conal Urquhart guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Fox Yappers on Cashin’ In Love the Idea of Replacing Union Workers With Welfare Recipients
April 3, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media If there’s anything you can count on from the yappers on some of the Fox Business Channel shows that they air on Fox News on Saturdays, it’s that if there’s a way to trash unions or to paint anyone who receives any sort of government assistance as lazy, good-for-nothing loafers who just want to suck off of the government teet, they’re going to do it. With this story, they got a two-fer. What could possibly be wrong with getting rid of union MTA workers only to have them replaced with welfare recipients? It’s nothing but a big race to the bottom where the Wall Street bankers in New York get their tax breaks and after saying the layoffs are necessary because the city’s broke, union workers get replaced by those with no protections in place working for minimum wage. And if these welfare recipients are single mothers, just who is supposed to be paying for their daycare while they’re out there cleaning the subways in New York City? And just what type of meaningful job training are you giving anyone by teaching them how to push a broom? Looks like none to me. I’m all for programs that help those on welfare gain some skills so they can get back into the workforce and earn a decent living instead of having to be dependent on the government and where they’re allowed to work without being cut off of their benefits if that job training is going to lead to them being independent and able to earn a living wage where they can take care of themselves and their families. I don’t see how this is one of them. I agree with the one outnumbered “liberal” on the panel who they actually allowed some air time. When host Cheryl Casone asked Christian Dorsey about whether this might help any of those workers get a full time job, we got one of the few moments of truth out of this segment. DORSEY: Look, I’m all for making sure that people who have been left out of the workforce and who are on welfare receiving public assistance get the skills to be self sufficient, but remember, welfare is now administered by the states. It’s not an overall federal program. It’s block granted. And what’s happening in New York is cause for alarm, not praise Cheryl. They’re laying off transit workers and replacing them with lower cost transient workers, so this is in essence getting rid of decent jobs for people, adding to unemployment and then saving money by putting welfare recipients in those jobs that used to be held by non-welfare recipients. It’s not improving the overall job situation in New York or in the country. This is bad policy. And one of the worst parts of this segment was Fox hack Jonathan Hoenig letting everyone know what conservatives think about anyone receiving welfare at all. HOENIG: What about just getting rid of welfare? Let me just throw that one out there Cheryl as a real alternative idea. I mean, point to me somewhere in the Constitution where it says anything about charity. It does not. Now were the founders such (?) were they such jerks that they didn’t want to put that? No. Of course because charity is something that should be privately motivated. And I’m sorry Cheryl, working for money. That’s called a job, not another government assistance program, another government handout program. And of course in Hoenig’s mind, anyone on welfare is just some lazy person who wants to destroy our economy, unlike those poor businesses that might be forced to pay more taxes so women and children aren’t left to starve on the streets while they outsource the jobs they’d probably love to have to China and India, where the workers there can work for slave wages instead. When this country relied on the good will of the rich to provide for the welfare of the least among us instead of asking all of us to take care of each other, things didn’t work out so well . People like this tool Hoenig are more than happy to perpetuate a system that’s taking us right back there, along with his buddies at Fox News and Fox Business Channel. Here’s more from FindLaw on the legal predicament the city may have put themselves in as well — MTA Wants to Put NYC Welfare Recipients to Work : One of the foremost problems with the nation’s welfare system is that it often fails to provide recipients with the skills necessary to find and maintain employment. New York City’s Work Experience Program is designed to do just that–place welfare recipients in “unpaid” city jobs to build employable skills. The news on the street is that WEP will be getting an influx of new positions, as the money-challenged Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) has plans of hiring welfare recipients to clean the city’s subways and buses. Last year, budget cuts required the MTA to cut 3,500 jobs, 173 of which the Daily News reports were cleaning positions. Because the MTA has previously and successfully participated in the WEP, it is looking to fill those positions with welfare recipients who wish to acquire on-the-job skills. This may sound like a great idea for all parties involved, but it might present some legal problems for both the MTA and New York City. The Constitution restricts government agencies’ ability to discriminate between different groups of citizens. This includes in the area of employment. An argument can be made that the city and the MTA are discriminating in favor of welfare recipients in terms of who it employs in city jobs. In effect, it’s rehiring employees to fill cleaning positions, and is requiring that any applicants be currently receiving some form of welfare. Chances are city attorneys and the MTA have already analyzed this possibility and found that it passes constitutional scrutiny. But if they haven’t, they should get on it quick before an ex-MTA employee decides to file suit.
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UN worker says evacuation of 200 employees follows repeated attacks on its Abidjan offices by pro-Gbagbo forces The United Nations mission in Ivory Coast has begun evacuating some 200 employees after frequent attacks on its headquarters by forces loyal to the country’s incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo. A UN employee said they had been told today that they were leaving, and had been taken by helicopter from their base in Abidjan to the airport. They expected to be evacuated initially to the northern city of Bouake. The source asked not to be named because UN employees are not authorised to speak to the press. The evacuation order is for all “essential employees.” Non-essential workers were evacuated several months ago. The UN still has a military presence in Ivory Coast, and French forces secured Abidjan airport yesterday. Gbagbo’s elected successor, Alassane Ouattara, has meantime rejected UN charges that his forces were involved in a massacre of hundreds of civilians . The UN mission (ONUCI) said yesterday that traditional hunters known as Dozos fought alongside Ouattara’s forces and took part in the killing of 330 people in the western town of Duékoué. Troops loyal to Ouattara, the widely recognised winner of last November’s election, launched an offensive early this week to dislodge Gbagbo after his continued refusal to accept the result of the UN-certified poll. The International Committee of the Red Cross said yesterday that at least 800 people had been killed in intercommunal violence in Duékoué this week. It was not clear whether the 330 counted by ONUCI was included in that figure. The UN said its secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, had spoken to Ouattara, who told him his forces were not involved in the Duékoué killings. Speaking on France24 television, Guillaume Ngefa, the deputy head of UNOCI’s human rights division, blamed 220 of the deaths on pro-Ouattara forces. He said the killings happened between Monday and Wednesday as pro-Ouattara troops advanced southward. He said pro-Gbagbo militia fighters killed more than 110 poeple. “[Ouattara] government notes with regret that the allegations of the deputy chief of ONUCI human rights division are not supported by any evidence after its preliminary investigation,” his administration said in a statement. It also denied that Dozos made up part of its forces. After quickly taking control of swathes of the country, pro-Ouattara forces have met fierce resistance over the past three days. Troops loyal to Gbagbo have held on to positions around the presidential palace in Abidjan, Gbagbo’s residence, and state television headquarters. In Paris, the French defence ministry said French troops had taken control of Abidjan’s airport and that the country planned to send an additional 300 troops to Ivory Coast. After a day and night of intense fighting, Abidjan was calm this morning with sporadic gunfire, residents said. Heavy canon fire and shooting were heard overnight in the pro-Gbagbo neighbourhood of Yopougon and also in Cocody, they added. More than 1,300 people have been killed so far in the post-election violence. The Catholic charity Caritas said in a statement that teams visiting Duékoué reported that a thousand people had been killed or “disappeared”. Ivory Coast United Nations guardian.co.uk
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